Wet Graves (19 page)

“I'm thinking about selling this bloody house, Cy. That's all. Thanks. See you.”

If you can't carry a gun, carry cash. Very neat. Well, I couldn't carry a gun because the police had taken mine after the fracas in the Kings Cross alley, and I hadn't been interested enough at the time to ask for it back. I used to have an unlicensed Colt .45 which I kept for emergencies in a clip under the dashboard of my old Falcon. But the old Falcon let in water and the firing pin on the Colt had rusted solid.
What the hell
? I thought
No veteran of the bridge is going to be under seventy. Carry cash
. I deposited Louise Madden's cheque, drew out a couple of hundred, and drove to the Rocks.

17

My reasoning was this: someone connected with the Veterans of the Bridge Society was killing the descendants of the bridge builders. Motive uncertain. Revenge? Retribution? Insanity almost certainly part of the picture. Probably, therefore, the perpetrator was connected with someone who'd been killed while working on the bridge. That gave me the list of names. The list was dauntingly Anglo-Saxon and ordinary—McKeon, Addison, Campbell and the like. There would be thousands of people by those names now living in the city. But it was a starting point. As I drove I recalled a section in Spearritt's book headed ‘Driven to Death'. According to Spearritt, more than 150 people had suicided by jumping from the bridge. If they were factored in, as the experts on the radio say, the net would be cast even wider. How many people connected with the 150 jumpers would there be? It sounded like a job for Professor Spearritt and his computer. What about people killed in car crashes on the bridge? What about the people whose TV reception was buggered up by all the metal? The more I thought that way, the more I was reminded that there were more than five million rivets in the bridge. It would be hell of a job looking for just one of them.

Pump Street was quiet and oddly dusty. The dust must have drifted from construction sites nearby and settled there, because there was no actual building work going on in the street itself. It gave the landscape an old-world, historical flavour, as if nothing much had changed since the streets were unpaved and there was more horse dung on the road than oil stains. I drove slowly along the street, turned at the end and looked for the laneway that usually runs behind rows of Sydney terraces. No laneway, or rather, there had been a lane but the red brick building I had noticed before, which I now identified as a bond store, had annexed it sometime in the past and there was now no back entrance to the houses. Not good. I didn't want to be held up again by Betty Tracey nor to provide entertainment for the diversion-starved residents of Pump Street.

I parked opposite number 47, a few doors along from 43A, and saw the solution to my problem. At the end of the terrace, just before a series of semi-detached houses began, there was a narrow gap. I crossed the street and inspected the opening to a passage scarcely wide enough to squeeze through and not passable by anyone really bulky. All Alan Bond's millions wouldn't get him down there. I negotiated it, although I felt I had to hold my breath and suck in my stomach. Also I had to twist myself sideways to make the turn where the passage went right, parallel to the street and behind the houses. The opposing wall was high and brick, part of the lane-annexing bond store. The backyards to the houses were almost non-existent—tiny, bricked or cemented squares with brick outhouse toilets, not even enough space for a Hills Hoist. There were wooden fences, much patched with galvanised iron and other materials and gates from the lane, opening in towards the houses. With the gate open, a rubbish bin in place and a six-pack, the yard would be full to capacity.

Some of the gates had listed so badly they were immovable; the hinges on others had rusted solid; a few had been nailed or boarded shut or simply built over. By squinting up at the backs of the houses and trying to calculate where the divisions of the terrace fell, I reckoned I was able to distinguish the back of number 43A. The house differed in no way from the others—same rusty iron roof, drooping guttering and water-stained walls. But the gate was firm on its posts and the hinges had been recently oiled. The paving in the lane was a sort of cobblestone that had cracked and lifted in places, further impeding the opening of the gates. But at the gate of 43A the paving had been mended, pounded flat. My theory, that someone had been listening in the house when I'd made my enquiry about Stan Livermore and had had the time and means to leave and kill old Stan, was looking stronger.
Look for a lean man
, I thought,
with an oilcan and a mallet
.

I braced my back against the brick wall and inched my feet up the solid gatepost until I was high enough to straddle the gate and climb over. The gate had a simple barrel bolt which I slid back experimentally—smooth as silk. I left it open and approached the house. A short, light access on the right-hand side, narrow set of brick steps to the back door, and a decayed, unfastened flywire screen with too many holes in it to keep flies out, let alone trouble burglars. On the solid door was a morticed lock, old and loose. A jiggle with a piece of thin metal (plastic never works for me), a downward pressure and twist on the handle, and I had the door open. Not exactly a break and enter, more a bend and enter.

I was in a small back porch which had been boarded up and provided with a couple of small windows. There was a narrow bed and about a seventh-hand cupboard; a cardboard box by the bed contained dirty socks and several copies of a racing tip sheet. Somehow this didn't look like the room of the late Stan Livermore, secretary of the Veterans of the Bridge Society. I went through a curtained doorway to the kitchen, which was like old kitchens everywhere in the city—lino on the surfaces, brass on the plumbing and cockroaches in the woodwork. There was a smell of some sort in the air, vaguely sweet and recognisable. The stove was still hot and I found an empty Rosella tomato soup can in a bucket under the sink. Memories of a Sydney boyhood. We used to pour a bit into the mugs, top up the can with milk and heat it. No saucepans, no spoons. Somewhere in this house was a traditionalist.

I moved through to the passage which led to the stairs. I know these kinds of houses. On ground level there'd be a front room, with the window opening onto the street, and two rooms upstairs. A bathroom off the landing. The verandah to the front room up top would be built-in, like the porch below. During the Depression these houses slept up to twenty people. My guess was that Betty Tracey occupied the front room by the door. That'd give her the greatest control over the movements of the people in the house. First grab at visitors and the mail, best snoop at the street. I went quietly down to the door and listened but there was no sound No chance of Betty being the soup eater, I was pretty sure you'd be able to hear her at it from the backyard.

That left the stairs, which from the look of them—ricketty treads, gap-toothed banisters, lifting lino—would certainly creak. No chance of surprise. I marched up the first flight calling, “Mr Livermore. Mr Livermore! Are you in?”

A man appeared at the top of the stairs. “Who are you?” he said. “How did you get in here?”

“Mrs Tracey let me in. I met her outside.” I waved my hand in the direction of the street. “I paid her five dollars and she let me in.”

“Five dollars, mmm. That'll keep her happy in the pub for a few hours.” He came down the stairs far enough into the dim light to enable me to see him. Bald, sixty maybe, strong-looking, in a heavy cable-knit sweater and flannel trousers. “Didn't she tell you Mr Livermore was dead?”

“No. No, she didn't. I'm sorry to hear that. Recently, was it?” ‘

“The other day. She's a shameless old extortionist. That's what she is. Well, afraid that's the way of it.”

“Ah, I'm a journalist. Brian Kelly. I was hoping to talk to Mr Livermore about the Veterans of the Bridge Society. Thought there might be a piece in it, you know. Mr …?”

“Lithgow, Charles Lithgow. A journalist, eh? I'm a bit of a writer myself. Who d'you write for, Mr Kelly?”

“Freelance.” I went up a few more steps; he came down a few and we shook hands. He had a hard, calloused hand, very strong grip. “That's a pity. There's a lot of interest in the bridge, what with the tunnel going through and the toll going up.” I tried a smile.

Mr Lithgow's slightly wrinkled but composed features arranged themselves in a corresponding smile. “It's a shame you missed him. I really enjoyed talking to him myself. I'm sure he had a lot of memorabilia, in fact I know he had. His room's full of it.” He gestured above and behind him. “Would you like to see it?”

“Do you think that'd be all right?”

Lithgow retreated a few steps. “I'm sure it would. All he lived for, really. Poor old chap. I'm sure he'd be pleased there was someone taking an interest.”

We went up the stairs, past the landing, to the top floor. The light improved a little, coming in through a room with an open door. Lithgow pointed to the closed door opposite. “Stan's room.”

“No family or friends to …” I shrugged, “handle his affairs?”

Lithgow opened the door. “Apparently not Lonely old soul, apart from the members of his society, of course.”

“Many of them?”

“A few.”

I felt strangely reluctant to go into the dead man's room. I was disconcerted by Lithgow's manner. His clothes weren't expensive and he wore a slightly shabby air but he smelled very dean. His voice was dear and his accent was precise; he sounded old-fashioned rather than well-educated, almost as if he'd picked up a set of mannerisms from a play or a book. “Not a member of the society yourself, Mr Lithgow?”

“Me? Heavens, no. I suppose you're wondering why I'm living in a place like this?”

I took out my notebook. “Would you have the names of the society members? Yes, I'm wondering, but you don't have to tell me if you don't want to.”

“No objection at all. I'm retired from the public service. Had a lifelong interest in this area. Generations of Lithgows lived here until, well, until I broke the tradition. But now I'm back and I'm writing a book about the old place. What d'you think of that?”

“Sounds fine to me, Mr Lithgow. Are you sure about going into Mr Livermore's room?”

“Of course, of course.” He pushed the door wide and we went into the room. It was rather dark and cold, being on the side of the house away from the sun. A small window let in a little eastern light. It was also obsessively neat and dean. The bed, with a thin, grey blanket on top, was made with military precision; all books and papers were set on shelves with aligned edges and right-angled piles. The few personal items on the chest of drawers and bedside table—comb, bus timetable, nail scissors—were clean and carefully laid out.

“An orderly man,” I said.

“Very. And a very nice old chap, too. But we all have to go. I just hope I get long enough to do this book. Well, Mr Kelly, I have my researches to get on with. Take as long as you like. I'm just across the hall if you want me.”

He ducked his head and almost bowed himself out of the room. I set about a systematic search, which Stan Livermore's efficient habits made easy. He had a collection of books about the bridge, including those I'd seen in the library, and a good deal of related material—pamphlets, magazine articles, newspaper clippings and correspondence. What it all came to was an obsession, a fixed idea that the building of the bridge had exacted an enormous toll of lives and happiness. The “dislocation and eviction of people from houses on the land resumed for the approaches, the closing of schools and businesses, the diversion of traffic—they were all documented. There was a voluminous recording of the accidents and deaths, and a minute tracing of consequences for wives and families. In the bottom drawer of the chest were files on scores of cases which ran from medical reports to correspondence with members of parliament. It was all alphabetical; all the handwriting was clear and legible; all clippings and photographs were annotated with dates and sources. It was too much of a good thing.

I worked through it using the only system I could think of—checking for names. Livermore appeared to have had no special interest in any of the bridge builders. The names came up—Ennis, Madden, Glover, Bradfield—but none was traced beyond the completion of the bridge. There were files on the sixteen men killed, but these petered out in the 1950s, as if twenty years was as long as anyone cared to remember them. The society had devoted itself to getting a suitable memorial for the dead, helping the families of some of the injured men and attempting to keep people who had worked on the bridge in touch with each other. It seemed a vain task. There was a large bundle of letters returned from the post office marked “address unknown”.

Stan Livermore himself had been a riveter who worked for five years on the job without suffering injury. I found a complimentary reference to Captain David Guthrie, for his intervention in the case of a worker who had been sacked for being asleep on the job. Captain Guthrie had demonstrated that fumes from an ill-maintained piece of equipment had overcome the man, who was reinstated. Casting about, I found no reference to anyone named Tracey or Burton or Lithgow. No Hardys either, or Broadways. I was running out of analytical tools fast, and aware that I might be running out of time. Lithgow had given me carte blanche, but that wouldn't cut much ice if Betty Tracey returned and blew my cover. I did a last search for active members of the society as of the latest date and came up with six names. But the last time these individuals and Stan Livermore had convened a meeting was almost a year back. Still, it was something.

As I was tidying up the files I wondered if the old men had turned their attention to the new disruption caused by the harbour tunnel—the extra traffic through North Sydney, the noise of the tunnelling, the pollution of the harbour. Probably not. Their obsession was with the past and the people now being plagued by the tunnel-builders would have had as much trouble getting a hearing from them as from other Sydneysiders. In a way, it was the same story all over again—the greater good of the greater number and to hell with the rest.